Emory vs Duke vs Vanderbilt

bernie12
Thu, 04 Jul 2013 13:31:15 +0000

Georgia Tech has almost always had the support of Coke. Just sayin…you been over there and seen the name of the buildings? We are no longer considered the Coca Cola School because of a lot of the donations and funding come from elsewhere (like the campaign monies. A slipping school doesn’t raise 1.6 plus in campaign monies during a recession. You just can’t do that). Also, GT does have a good business school at the graduate level (I don’t what people think about UG). It’s management school is actually quite successful (they help people go into more tech oriented sectors normally). I don’t know if your ranking obsessed mind will understand it, but this is the case. Also, Georgia Tech is an Excellent institution in general. It deserves to get funding from major donors and philanthropists in Ga. as much as emory does.

Also, those other schools you mention have been Research 1 Universities for quite a bit longer than Emory. Emory essentially just got there compared many such places. The fact that any rankings (as sketchy as they are) can be even close to some of those places within 20-25 years (that’s how long it has been) is actually quite remarkable. It’s called growing pains, there is nothing pathetic about it. In addition, the research rank of the med. school is referring to funding. Given our competition (with some of them being those giant, renowned public school medical centers like UCLA, anything in the top 30 isn’t bad. Most of the med. school is funded by the NIH, so I would imagines that it is probably a matter of how much grant apps. they get). Does Vanderbilt have a poet Laureate, people like Salman Rushdie, is it one of the elite schools participating in things like the Tibet-Science Initiative (which we basically invented by the way). Has it become a place known for its scene in lit. and writing (this fact has been well-publicized), does it have a BBA program (which does indeed rank very high compared with most places that have BBAs, including older ones, and ones whose program is all 4 years), no (it does have an engineering school, but it doesn’t compare as favorably w/other engineering schools as our BBA program compares w/BBAs). The two schools are completely different and offer different things. They draw a different crowd in general (I mean, look at the difference in demographics).

One will likely not get a higher quality of education at near peers like Vandy. It isn’t better. It may be better for certain people, if they want the sports or it has a program we don’t offer (likewise, if you want a BBA or undergraduate nursing program, a top English program, etc, and care more about certain other strong academic offerings, you may choose Emory), but it or the near peers are not better overall. The difference in app. numbers is due to recognition in sports and successful marketing on the part of certain peer institutions.

Again, your analysis is too simplistic. “You” are obsessed with the rankings, not everyone. People at places like Cornell, which are well-ranked but have not really moved, seem fine. Aside from this, it seems clear that you don’t get how rankings work. You can be in a solid city and that’s not going to effect the ranking. For some prestige driven professions like business, it is indeed advantageous to be anywhere north of the southeast (because that’s where the really large firms are. It’s why Stern and Wharton are insane). Also, I’m sure that the size of the medical center served by the med. school has some sort of influence on med. school rankings. For example, many of the large public School medical centers beat private schools in primary care (UNC Chapel Hill is an example). It’s impressive that many private schools rank that high in primary care when many of the students they get go on to specialize. So at least the institution cares. Also 29 is impressive because very recently, it was in the 40s (as in like 2 years ago, Emory primary care was in the 40s and some/many of the peer private schools were as well or in some nearby 30). This certainly doesn’t support the idea of the place slipping.

UChicago is great, but I don’t think it deserves to be ahead of some of those other places. The rankings are not really reliable anymore in my opinion. In fact, I’m willing to bet that UChicago probably is surprised (though elated) that it is there. You are indeed very confused. I don’t think places like Stanford, MIT, Caltech, and Columbia are freaking out on finding ways to be “better” than Chicago. Many of these places likely believe (or know) that they are already better. They aren’t going to jump through hoops just to improve their rank. They will just continue to do what is necessary to be an excellent institution and continue to improve the experience for the students and faculty there. A mature person would want Emory to take such an approach. You would want it to do its best to strive for excellence and leverage its resources for our and the faculty’s sake, not the rankings sake. Often catering to the rankings leads to superficial improvements (this was Emory’s problem in my opinion). Now the place should just pursue excellence the best way it can irregardless of the rankings and hope that whatever it does works. Hopefully, just as it did for the very elite schools, the ranking will follow. This notion that the very elite schools got there because they literally had the other schools in mind is really silly. They did no such thing. They merely leveraged their resources, got their administration in line, and often took risks to become leaders in education. Many of them also immediately grew very robust graduate environments before, then, refocusing on UG education (the Chicago and JHU model is known for this). Emory is not the “fall of Rome” (Rome, seriously, rome…?), it just needs to find its pathway to success and make a unique contribution to highered. This is more important than rankings and means that the institution has to be more “bold” outside of the arena of building better facilities (the mistake of many 15-25 schools seems to be that they think they can merely build a “better” or prettier school without changing educational paradigms and suddenly become world renowned).
And I think this argument is essentially done, because you keep using this idea that “that rank is too low for its location” (and as for business school rank vs. location, it helps to understand that the health of Atlanta’s economy is not good. Also the place is known for manufacturing jobs). This just says that you are rank obsessed and are not satisfied with the rank (as in, you are presenting your , not that the school is slipping. You have provided very poor arguments constantly saying that “because the schools are alike and Emory isn’t beating them and has more money, it’s slipping”. This sounds kind of stupid (The UC system, especially Berkeley has tons of money, and its struggling financially, but is still clearly excellent). They are, in general, poor and childish ways to make arguments. They lack historical perspective and nuance that would be expected from a college student. This mainly sounds like you throwing a tantrum because you are rankings obsessed; rankings that you clearly don’t understand if you think being in Atlanta should just result in a high rank for everything. What great naivete. In addition, not knowing things that Coke has always been involved with GT and not knowing that GT is actually deserving of investment also lowers your credibility.

I’m going to call ■■■■■.